The God Killers

by David Simpson

  “Little boy, are you having fun?” an elderly woman asked him with a smile.

  Han turned and saw her head poking out from the dark waves. “Yes,” he shrieked excitedly.

  The elderly woman laughed and Han echoed her giggle.

  He then turned away from her and looked back at the beach. He’d run a long way out to reach the water, and his sister seemed little more than a dot in the distance. He turned back to the old woman, but she had disappeared. Han scanned the waves for her, but he saw nothing.

  Suddenly, as a dark wave built to a crest, the old woman’s head appeared once again, seemingly materializing out of the darkness of the wave’s shadow. “You could come out further and swim with me,” the elderly woman beckoned with a smile. “It’s fun out here when your feet can’t touch the bottom.”

  Han smiled and began to paddle toward the woman’s beaming face and grandmotherly coaxing.

  “That’s a good boy! Try to reach me,” the woman kindly encouraged as she held out her hand.

  Han’s feet left the sandy bottom, and he began floating freely in the cool water. He stretched out to grasp the old woman’s hand, but the closer he got, the farther away she seemed to float. Waves of saltwater washed over his face, and he intermittently closed his eyes, losing sight of the elderly woman’s smiling face. Each time he reopened them, she seemed to be a little farther away, bobbing up and down in the dark shadows of the waves.

  “That’s a good boy! Come a little farther!” she laughed.

  “I-I’m getting tired!” Han called to her. “I have to go back! My sister—”

  “No you don’t,” the elderly woman growled, her voice suddenly making the water feel colder than the snows of Kilimanjaro.

  Suddenly, but too late, Han realized he was following a water ghost into the open sea. He’d thought the daylight would protect him, as he’d never seen a ghost during the day, but this water ghost was clever, clinging to the intermittent shadows cast by the waves. The elderly woman had died, perhaps during the Cultural Revolution, attempting to float on a tire from mainland China to Hong Kong, or perhaps paddling from Vietnam in search of freedom and an escape from the war. It really did not matter. All that mattered was that she was a spirit lost on the Third Plane, and she needed Han’s soul to purify her own so she could move into the next world.

  Han twisted his body and began to swim desperately toward the beach. The waves were grinding him down; his young arms and legs pumped and kicked fruitlessly, till they were numb from exhaustion. Each time he looked back to see where the elderly woman was, she was closer. He peed himself again, a temporary jet of warmth on his leg as he thrashed in the icy darkness of the water. Again, he desperately looked back to see where the elderly woman was, but this time she was gone.

  He stopped his desperate swim then, and he let his arms and legs rest as he floated, gently kicking every so often to keep his head above water. His heart pounded, and he gasped, trying to take in as much air as possible into his lungs. When he felt he’d had enough, he screamed out, “Katie! Help me!” He knew it was impossible for her to hear his insignificant voice over the roar of the immutable and implacable sea, but he had to try.

  The boy continued to float in the abyss. Slowly, he paddled toward the shore. It took all of his strength to keep his arms and legs from seizing up from fear and fatigue, but he knew he couldn’t let his muscles become rigid, or he’d sink to the bottom like a stone, whether the water ghost got him or not. He continued to kick gently and turned his eyes to the beach, hopeful that he could catch a glimpse of his sister; Poseidon undulated, and the beach rose and fell in the blurry distance. If I could catch a glimpse of her, the boy thought, I could at least wave my arms and maybe she would look his way.

  She didn’t.

  The woman breached preternaturally from the waves and seemed to stand on the water itself. “Your soul for mine, little boy. You will save me from the eternal cold.”

  “No!” Han screamed as loudly as he possibly could. It was his death scream, and he knew it. The water ghost would never allow him to make a sound again.

  She fell upon him before he could fully gulp one last breath of air, then pulled him beneath, down into the salty, darkness. She wrapped her arms around his chest and squeezed the air out of him with a strength that should have been impossible for one who appeared so feeble.

  No matter how badly he wanted to hold on, his lips parted to let the air rush out, and the bubbles rushed past his lips; he kept his eyes closed, knowing he would be dead in seconds.

  He was dying.

  Then, a light appeared somewhere in the distance. Wait...are my eyes open? He saw flashes of the old woman, laughing as she ran to the light, leaving him behind. Suddenly, they were both ripped from the light, and after the briefest moment, they found themselves in the frigid waters once again.

  “You will not take him!” the old woman shouted as arms pushed Han up into the air.

  He gasped for breath, and he flashed his eyes open and saw his sister, delivering him from evil once again. This time, however, Katie would pay the ultimate price.

  The old woman pounced on her from behind and wrapped her arms around Katie’s young neck. “It will be you then! It will be you who goes to the cold!”

  “Swim, Han! Get to the beach!” Katie shrieked.

  Those were her last words before the darkness took her.

  Han swam hard to the beach and crawled onto the sand as a lifeguard bound past him and into the water. He already knew it would be too late. Katie had traded her life for his. She was one of them now.

  11

  More than a decade later, Han sat in his room at the sanitarium and watched out his window as the sun melted into a pool of fiery blood in the west. Ghosts were already coming out from their hiding places, crawling into the lengthening shadows and increasingly implacable and powerful darkness. He was careful not to make direct eye contact with any of them.

  “Han,” Father Hurley spoke in his crisp, grandfatherly voice from the doorway of Han’s room.

  Han continued to sit on the edge of his bed, his shoulders slumped, watching the uncanny figures—male and female, young and old—as they moved about the sanitarium lawn. There was no escape, no meaning in life, and Han didn’t waste any effort to affect any emotion. He took no pleasure or displeasure in Father Hurley’s presence. While Father Hurley was a nice man, a little rotund, as most sixty-year-old men are, pleasant and harmless in his demeanor, as far as Han was concerned, smiling, nodding, or shaking hands was a pretense for the sane—and pretense was insane.

  “Han, my dear boy, I’ve brought someone with me this time.”

  For Han, a visitor was unexpected and garnered a small portion of his attention. Han’s eyebrow arched ever so slightly. Father Hurley had been visiting him and chatting with him for over a year, visiting once a week and talking with Han about his troubles. There was no need for Han to lie, so he told the good father the truth, exactly as he saw it. Father Hurley listened politely, even earnestly, it seemed to Han, as the young man offered thorough and vivid descriptions of constant ghostly bombardment. The priest was a sounding board, Han’s opportunity to verbalize the horror that had become his life. Still, Han felt sure that Father Hurley—just like the multitude of psychiatrists he’d been seeing since his sister’s murder, to his present state of involuntary incarceration at a mental hospital—simply thought he was a paranoid schizophrenic; thus, there was no validation. Han had not experienced validation since his sister had been pulled into the abyss so long ago. Little did he know that validation was on the horizon.

  “This is…Han, meet Cipher,” Father Hurley announced in a gentle tone. “He’s here to talk to you.”

  “Cipher? That means ‘zero,’ doesn’t it? Did your parents not like you very much or something?” Han asked.

  “It’s his computer hacker name,” Father Hurley replied, giving away a little too much information and showing his discomfort in dealing with the terminology
of technology. Father Hurley was much more comfortable dealing with metaphysics and epistemology texts than the ins and outs of the cybersphere, or whatever the heck they called it.

  “A computer hacker? Why would you bring a hacker to see me?” asked Han, mildly curious but still despondently watching as more and more ghosts rose and slithered into the increasing darkness.

  “Stop looking at them,” Cipher interjected.

  Han spun quickly, his eyes wide at the stranger’s words. “Them? You can see them too?!” he shouted.

  Cipher stood calmly at the door. He was much younger than the priest, yet he exuded an authority that could only come from having suffered more than his fair share of pain.

  Father Hurley stood to the side and allowed the meeting to take place naturally, without any further explanation from him.

  Han stood to his feet, his body rigid with shock. “You can see them!” he repeated, more to affirm the fact for himself than as a request for confirmation.

  Cipher confirmed it anyway. “Yes, and so can Father Hurley. You should know better by now. You shouldn’t be looking at them,” Cipher replied.

  Han’s world had changed in an instant. For years, he’d thought he was the only one who could see them—besides his sister, whom they’d taken. Now this man, with a countenance made of stone, and Father Hurley...they could see.

  “I wasn’t looking directly at them. I know not to.”

  “And yet, they know you can see them. That’s why they hang around places like this. Most of the people in this building can see them. That’s why they hover around you all night, even while you keep your eyes shut tight and try to block out their laughter and taunts.”

  “This means…I-I’m not crazy,” Han stammered.

  “That depends on your definition of crazy. To the world, yes, you’re bat-shit crazy, because you see the things that make it impossible to live a normal life. But if you’re crazy, then I’m crazy too. And to tell you the truth, I like being crazy.”

  “Why?”

  “Only the crazies have a chance to change things, and trust me when I say there’s a lot of changes that need to be made.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “You will. For now, all you need to know is that, if you’re willing, Father Hurley can sign you out of here tonight.”

  “What?” Han said, suddenly feeling as though he were caught somewhere between the waking and sleeping world. His mouth was still hanging half-open, stuck between the words.

  “You’ve been undergoing a year-long job interview. Father Hurley was gathering information about you. We knew you could see, but we needed to know if we could use you.”

  “Use me for what?”

  “You were a paramedic once, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “So you know how to use a defibrillator?”

  “Yes. Of course.”

  “Perfect. Then you can help us fight back. Get your things. We’ve got a car waiting outside.”

  With that, Cipher and Father Hurley exited the room and left Han alone, and yet, he was not alone. He would never be alone again.

  12

  Cipher grasped Han’s soaked white t-shirt, pulled his limp body out of the bathtub, and dragged him to the center of the living room. He sprang to the bedroom and grabbed the defibrillator. Before he could return to Han’s side, however, Charlie was back, smiling, with his gun still in hand, blood dripping from his lips onto Han’s chest.

  “There’s a dead Chinaman on your floor,” the disembodied voice said, Charlie’s lips still not moving.

  “Get away from him!” Cipher commanded as he charged at the ghost. Charlie easily backhanded Cipher across the room and sent him flying over the back of the nearby couch; he followed this gesture by unloading his gun in Cipher’s general direction.

  “The Chinaman will die,” the voice said, as though it were whispering into Cipher’s ear, a familiar tone of pleasure brought forth from pain.

  “You don’t know who you’re fucking with, Charlie,” Cipher replied between hard-clenched teeth as he charged back into the bedroom and flung the closet open. Inside was a sawed-off shotgun, with an ultraviolet light mounted on top. As Charlie entered the room, Cipher shined the light on him, causing the spirit’s essence to burn with the imitation energy of day. In the next instant, Cipher opened fire, and Charlie was forced to dematerialize to avoid being cut in half. He reappeared almost instantly outside Han’s apartment, standing on the railing of his balcony, and seethed at Cipher before jumping from the railing and disappearing once again.

  “I’ll see you again soon,” the voice gurgled in Cipher’s ear.

  Cipher sprang back to his feet and to his friend’s side. He bent down over Han to check for any sign that he might be breathing, but there were none. He listened at his chest and heard something weak, perhaps a faint beat. He began to pound on his friend’s chest, trying to force the water from his lungs and to get him breathing again. Water gushed out of Han’s mouth like a geyser, and he, spluttering and choking, began to breathe.

  Cipher sat back against the wall of the apartment, clutching his gun, and trying to catch his breath, and wiping sweat away from his eyes, while Han continued to splutter. “You...did you see anything...on the other side?” Cipher asked between gasps.

  “Fucking...angels,” Han managed to utter through a cough. “They almost...almost had me. This is why we leave the dying to you.”

  “How’d you end up in that tub?”

  Han got to his hands and knees and caught his breath. As much-needed oxygen finally reached his brain, he remembered. “It was my sister. Katie came to see me and led me to a meadow…and then to a...a pond…and then she dragged me in,” he said, the last words quiet like the air on a clear arctic night.

  “Your sister? The one who was drowned by the water ghost?”

  “No. The other sister.” He shook his head. “Have I ever talked about another sister? Jack ass.”

  Cipher looked back across the room and out the window into the night sky where his father had disappeared. “My father just shot up the apartment. I think it’s a safe bet that God knows where we are. He’s fucking with us in the ways that hurt the most. We’ve gotta stay on the move.”

  “On the lam from God? Right.”

  13

  Han leaned on Cipher as the two men exited the apartment building, each with more gear slung over his shoulders. “I’m still pretty fucked up, dude,” Han mumbled as he tried desperately to keep up. His adrenaline was aiding him in their dire situation, but the heroin still coursed hot through his body, leaving him nearly defenseless.

  “Great,” Cipher gruffly replied.

  He guided Han into the passenger seat of the car, then threw the rest of the gear, computer equipment, microphones, mini-disc recorders, and a large duffle bag filled with a shotgun, ultraviolet lights, handguns, and ammunition into the back seat. Within a few seconds, Cipher had the car started, and it squealed out of its parking spot and onto the black, dry, haunted roads.

  “What are we doing?” Han asked, his eyes intermittently rolling into the back of his head as he struggled to keep his head from falling back.

  “We’re staying on the move until morning. God knew where we were, so we’ve got to get off the grid somehow.”

  “How did he find us so fast?”

  “We underestimated how extensive their organization is. He is God, after all. They must be able to gather information almost instant—” Cipher’s sentence halted as quickly as the car as he slammed on his brakes at the crest of a hill. At the bottom of the hill, nearly a dozen apparitions stood blocking the intersection, waiting for them. “Holy shit. Not that way,” Cipher exclaimed. He began to reverse the car and looked over his shoulder just in time to see a woman, her gnashing teeth bared in rage, charging; at such a preternatural speed, she was closing in rapidly. She leapt onto the roof of the car and quickly melted through like a hot knife through butter, landing in the back seat and spitting bla
ck bile at Han.

  “You fucking bitch!” Han screeched as he lunged into the back of the car, but he was too late to grapple with the spirit. The woman snatched the duffle bag filled with the ammunition and ultraviolet lights and phased through the side door, the duffle bag smashing the window as she left.

  “Get back here!” Han cried at the top of his lungs as he bolted out of the car.

  Cipher stretched to catch the sleeve of his friend’s coat before he could make it out of the car but missed and watched as Han, still out of his mind from the heroin high, disappeared after the ghost thief. “Han! No!” he yelled as he watched, helpless. He turned quickly to see the rest of the spirits making their way toward the car; some walked, some crawled, some slithered, and some hovered above the ground as they floated toward their prey. “We’re in deep, deep shit, Han,” Cipher said to no one. Things were getting quickly out of hand; he was being cornered, and every option he had seemed to lead to certain death. He made the decision to reverse the car away from the oncoming phantoms and to pursue Han into the night. If he could get to him quickly enough, maybe, just maybe, he could get them both out of the nightmare before it was too late. The tires squealed as he pressed the accelerator against the floorboard as hard as he could. “Hang on, buddy. Hang on.”

  Meanwhile, Han continued his desperate pursuit. The phantom stayed agonizingly out of Han’s reach; every few moments, her face would uncannily appear on the back of her head, smiling and sticking her snakelike tongue out at her pursuer. Han closed the gap and thought for a moment that he had her, as his fingers come within inches of the duffle bag, but the ghost suddenly launched the bag over her shoulder and over a nearby fence before she vanished into the darkness, only a hollow, echoing laugh remained to signify her presence. A moment later, there was a loud splash.